Akbar’s History of the Mongols

One of the celebrated but little studied manuscripts produced in the atelier of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) was a copy of the history of the Mongols by Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318), the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh . Superbly illustrated by several of Akbar’s finest painters, the manuscript, with the title Chingīznāma , ended up in the Royal Library ( Kitābkhāna-yi Salṭanatī ) in Tehran, but not before a substantial number of the full-page pictures had disappeared. After being stolen and partly dispersed, the manuscript was returned to the Golestan Palace Museum Library in 1911 with 98 paintings, which were renumbered along with the remaining pages. This paper describes the manuscript as it presently exists, explains the different numbering schemes of the folios and pictures, and identifies the stages of its dispersal and the missing paintings, so far as currently known.